Capacity Building

The need for capacity building for local organisations

Capacity-building support is vital in building the long-term resilience of civil society organisations. It improves their ability to achieve their vision, mission and objectives. Capacity building develops and strengthens key organisational areas and provides staff and volunteers with the skills, processes and policies to more effectively serve their communities and respond to the issues they are addressing.

Stars Foundation Capacity Building Workshops

Our capacity building support focuses on the development and strengthening of key organisational areas such as human resources, financial management, and monitoring and evaluation.

In 2014 we reviewed our flagship Impact Awards and assessment process that underpins it. The review resulted in changes to the previous ‘consultancy’ element of the Impact Award package offered to organisations, which gave them the opportunity to hire a consultant or attend training to help them address bespoke organisational needs. Over the years Awardees had found it difficult to maximise the benefits of this element of the Award package, as finding the time to prioritise organisational needs and identifying the right consultant was sometimes a challenge.

We were also keen to explore ways of getting our pool of Awardees together after the awards week, when organisations came together for the first time and were celebrated for their work. We wanted to provide the opportunity for further sharing and learning, to encourage the replication of best practice in our regions of focus.

In 2015 we delivered our first regionally-based capacity building workshops in Jordan, the Philippines and Colombia. A second workshop for 2015 Impact Award winners and the first for 2016 winners take place in Vietnam, Paraguay and Jordan in 2017. Two participants from eight winners in each region are invited to attend the capacity building workshop. Early decisions on the type of content that is useful to all organisations are made during facilitation by Stars’ Programmes Team during awards week. This is then followed by a survey to determine topics more closely, and further discussion on capacity building priorities between Award winners and the Stars team as they build their relationship. Local consultants are employed to facilitate the workshops, and they liaise closely with participants in the lead-up.

We have also retained a portion of the previous 'consultancy' element of the Impact Award package to allow organisations to implement next steps following the workshops, or to invest in other organisational areas that they wish to strengthen further.

The objectives of the capacity building support are to:

Work with each organisation to identify areas of capacity building that will strengthen its ability to achieve its vision, mission and objectives

Showcase and encourage the replication of best practices through peer-to-peer sharing and learning opportunities and joint problem-solving

Build a network of strong organisations that can then serve as role models for other civil society organisations with whom we can share resources and tools to further replicate best practice

We offer:

Self-assessment tools to help with organisational assessment and development areas

Guidance to prioritise of capacity building areas

Structured networking, sharing and learning during Awards week

Planning workshop during Awards week to define plans for capacity building of NGOs as a group

Workshops in region

Bespoke consultancy

Joint problem solving exercise or learning visit

In an effort to support more NGOs in their development and strengthening, we are embarking on a collaboration with Philanthropy University that will provide organisations with relevant and accessible courses online, reaching many more NGOs than before.